The History of Prog: final part now up.

[Jaq]

At risk of earning the hurling of rotten tomatoes at me...I actually have no problem with this series but one.

Basically, boiled down to it's essence, the constant critical history of prog rock's death in the 1970s was "people went to listen to punk because they were tired of how over the top ELP and Yes got." And despite being a prog head and loving both ELP and Yes to death...they have a point. ELP's hilarious stage shows and pretentious adaptations of classical pieces, Yes recording a double album with only four songs on it and doing rock concerts where you had to be seated before the show started, where the band promptly hit you with 82 minutes of new music at once-neither move was the sort of thing that you'd call audience friendly. These were progressive ROCK bands, and I can see, very clearly, where some rock fans could see bands doing this sort of thing and think "but I just want to ROCK." As much as I love 36 minute long versions of Karn Evil 9 and the bulk of Topographic Oceans (I still can't get into The Ancient, and I doubt I ever will), it's easy to see them from the outside as being breaking points where even prog fans said "okay, we're getting a little goofy here."

Where this series has a problem is that the first two parts are clearly written as love letters to Keith Emerson, and as such provide nowhere near enough context for the growth of prog. Part 3, which is supposed to come across as the part where ELP gets slammed, also reads like a fanboy appreciation. Without the proper context for the growth of prog, which really doesn't come until Part 4, it does feel like out of the blue, this series blames Yes and solely Yes.

A lot of things caused prog to "die". But one of them WAS the reaction that many people, including fans of the genre, had to Topographic Oceans. The problem comes when this is presented as the sole reason, rather than a symptom.

[Orbert]

I'm still not buying it.  It's not an overwhelming majority or anything, but there are a lot of Yes fans and prog fans in general who consider Tales from Topographics Oceans to be the epitome of prog.  If the idea was to push for longer, more complex tunes, albums with more akin to classical symphonies than teenage dance music, then this was the ultimate achievement.  If he says that this was just too much for some people, then he does have a point, but it's not like the entire prog world heard it and went "WTF?  That's it, I've had it.  Nothing but punk and disco from now on!"

[lonestar]

I'm still not buying it.  It's not an overwhelming majority or anything, but there are a lot of Yes fans and prog fans in general who consider Tales from Topographics Oceans to be the epitome of prog.  If the idea was to push for longer, more complex tunes, albums with more akin to classical symphonies than teenage dance music, then this was the ultimate achievement.  If he says that this was just too much for some people, then he does have a point, but it's not like the entire prog world heard it and went "WTF?  That's it, I've had it.  Nothing but punk and disco from now on!"

I totally agree with you, but if I was going to pick a single album that signified the change in the prog scene, it would be Tales, even though it is a top 5 album for me.

[Orbert]

I guess.  I mean, I was around during that time, and I just don't remember a huge backlash or anything like that.  Yes did go on to release Relayer after that, and it was the same as Close to the Edge, three songs total.  Genesis had yet to release The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, their double album concept extravaganza.  ELP had yet to release Works, Volume One.  Each of those were as ridiculous in their own way as Tales.

Obviously I'm a huge Yes fan and am probably being way too defensive, but I honestly don't see how anyone can point at any one event, album, song, whatever, and say that that was the turning point.  The forces at work, both market and cultural, were far too complex to simplify things that much.  As Jaq said, it was more a symptom than a cause.

Prog was hot for a while.  It was cool to push the limits, it was cool to adapt classical pieces and integrate orchestras and write huge long epics and concept albums.  And then people found something else to amuse themselves.  As I said upthread, there was no "death of prog" -- it just gave way to the next big thing.  You could argue just as easily that it started to fade because it had reached its apex and had no further to go as you could that it went too far and people turned their backs on it, because obviously it was around for at least a few years after Tales.

Okay, I'll shut up now.

[lonestar]

I think it's telling too that the hippie era fell right along with prog, both gave way to disco and punk. It was more a sociocultural shift than anything else.

[Jaq]

I think it's telling too that the hippie era fell right along with prog, both gave way to disco and punk. It was more a sociocultural shift than anything else.

This. Consider the mid 70s in both America and especially in England. America had its disillusionment due to Watergate, lines at the gas pump, days where being allowed to gas up your car depended on the last number of your license plate, and the sense of failure caused by the Vietnam War. England had it WORSE. Three day work weeks, the power being switched off at 6 PM, a country waking up and realizing it had gone from empire to a third world country that needed loans from the World Bank. People didn't want flights of fancy anymore, or dreams of unity. They were angry and the hippie ideals of unity and free love had fallen apart, so it turned to rage and being out for yourself, fuck the world, let's just dance in the ruins.

Of course prog didn't stand a chance.

[lonestar]

You mean I was right?!?!?!?!  Fuck yeah!!!!

[Jaq]

You mean I was right?!?!?!?!  Fuck yeah!!!!

Oh yeah, totally. What I keep saying isn't that Topographic Tales ended prog, I'm saying the critics always cite it as the end of prog. The 1970s were far more complicated than people tend to remember even now, so trying to say a single album ended a movement of music is silly. Anything associated with the brighter, happier, more spiritual sides of the late 60s/early 70s took a beating. By the mid 70s, people were looking back to the 50s in the name of finding a sentimental better time while they were listening to disco and buying Kiss records. The 60s hippie stuff? That didn't work.

I'm also dreadfully cynical, so take what I say with a grain of salt 

[lonestar]

I totally agree. I'm not too hot on my prog history, but I know my hippie counterculture, and I do feel the two were heads of the same creature. Vietnam and the similar events of the time destroyed that,  opening the door for disco and the fast track satisfaction of its lifestyle.

[DebraKadabra]

Well... regardless of its faults, I still think it's cool enough reading material.

[lordxizor]

Part 5:
https://www.slate.com/articles/arts/prog_spring/features/2012/prog_rock/prog_music_today_nearfest_kanye_west_and_the_fans_who_still_love_prog_.html

[lordxizor]

Kind of a disappointing finish to the article in my opinion. He just talks about NEARfest ending. So that's supposed to show us prog is alive and well? He gives only a passing mention to modern prog bands and instead talks more about the old fogies who still listen to the original guys. Oh well. I thought it was a interesting read. I haven't listened to much classic prog and wasn't alive during it's heyday, so it's fun to hear about it.

[Nekov]

Read about 3 paragraphs and stopped. The guy that wrote this is a complete a**hole. If he is a prog fan he is one of the worst there is.

[Orbert]

I started reading the first installment and started skipping around about halfway through.  I was a huge ELP fan before I was a Yes fan, and I still love ELP, but trying to pinpoint Keith Emerson and The Nice as the official beginning of prog is just stupid.  Rock and roll had matured, it was through its adolescence and ready to breed with other types of music to create new types of music.  It happened through complex cultural forces, not because some guy saw an L-100 in a store and made a decision that would change the world.

The second through fourth bits weren't much better, from what I can tell.  I should probably applaud his effort to tackle such a huge topic, but to try and distill it to a few pages and present it as "The History of Prog" is just foolish.  Way too much focus on just a few bands, no mention at all about others, and brief mentions of others that seem to imply that he'd get into them more if he'd had the time and space.  Well, he's the one who chose the format.

Also, the factual errors don't help his case.  It made it seem like he didn't actually research things very well, so why should we even bother?

[Sketchy]

In before LTIA II starts in 5/4, not 11/8.

Oh wait, I just said it. I don't know. That bit irritated me (as you were talking about factual innaccuracies).

[Orbert]

Actually I thought it was alternating bars of 6 and 5, so 11/8 isn't a bad guess.  I'd call it 11/4 though.

[Sketchy]

Well, it sort of does really wierd stuff. It's sort of mostly in 5/4 and then 4/4 where it misses the last beat of the guitar rhythm and then does the bit where it goes up. So if anything, it's sort of in 17 (1 bar 5, three  bars 4)

[Orbert]

I may need to listen to it again (and I will when I get a chance), but I'm pretty sure it's just 6+5.  There's some syncopation here and there that might be throwing you off, but the rhythm is pretty straight.

[Jaq]

This series of articles feels less like a series of articles and more like excerpts from a longer work-like this guy is trying out a book length project. From what I've read, he's normally a political writer, so writing about music is foreign territory to him. There really could have been a part on what prog did in the early 80s to stay alive, because that's a fascinating period of time that I think a lot of prog fans dismiss because the sound of the music changed. (I hear a lot of people these days say Saga isn't a progressive rock band. Trust me, in 1982 we knew precisely what they were, and it was a prog rock band.) And I wouldn't mind the notion that punk killed prog being challenged, because punk rock was nowhere near as big a chart success as the oral history of rock would lead you to believe. But these articles aren't BAD, they just have some warts, and there really isn't anything that the writer says that isn't true. The only time in rock history that everyone-fans, record labels, and critics alike-ran away from a movement in music faster than prog in the 70s was glam metal in the early 90s. It took a couple of years for prog to collapse, after all. Glam metal died in six months!

[KevShmev]

Tales might be looked at as the start of the supposed end simply because of how narrowly over the top and non-catchy it was.  If you look at most of the early prog, almost all of it that was popular in the mainstream was catchy.  Yes, Floyd, Tull and ELP had the longer stuff, but they also had Long Distance Runaround, I've Seen All Good People, Money, Time, Aqualung, Teacher, Lucky Man and From the Beginning.  Tales was probably looked at as an attempt to appease only the hardcore proggers who wanted super long songs, thus the fringe fans - who liked the catchy stuff they heard on the radio, but were iffy on the longer stuff - had nothing to dig their heels into, so dumbass critics, who care only about what can be liked on the first listen, didn't get it and subsequently ripped the crap out of it and the entire genre.

[Orbert]

This series of articles feels less like a series of articles and more like excerpts from a longer work-like this guy is trying out a book length project.

I would almost hope so, as the subject is far too expansive to cover in a series of five articles.

But these articles aren't BAD, they just have some warts, and there really isn't anything that the writer says that isn't true.

I can't agree.  I saw quite a bit that isn't true, and I was just skimming.

In May, Procol Harum put out “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” carried along by organist Matthew Fisher’s warm, overwhelming rip from Bach’s “Air on the G String.”

I would say that calling it an "overwhelming rip" is untrue.  He's just repeating what has been (incorrectly) repeated for years.  The melodies are completely different.  The only similarity is the bass line, and simple descending line that shows up in a dozen other pieces by Bach and probably hundreds by other composers.

Many progressive epics change time signatures from bar to bar.

Seriously?  He claims that literally every other measure is in a different time signature from the preceding one, for 20 minutes.  If he had said "seem to" or something like that, it would be clear that he's exaggerating.  As it is, the hyperbole of his statement is just ridiculous.

(He fixed the line saying that Bill Bruford was in Asia)

Not every band was under the influence, of course. Yes, whose classic line-up included four vegetarians, just said no.

Where in the world did he get that?  It's well-known that Squire, Howe, and Anderson were high when they wrote most of Fragile, Close to the Edge, and Tales from Topographic Oceans.  They admit it.  Wakeman didn't smoke, but he drank like a fish.  Bruford was the only one who insisted on always recording and performing sober.

Also, Yes and ELP's producer was not "Mike Offord".  His name is Eddie.  A minor point, but as I said upthread, when you screw up the little details, it makes me doubt the accuracy of the really important stuff.

[ytserush]

The through line for these articles seems to be how prog fell apart due to excess. You don't get much more excessive than Emerson Lake and Palmer. 

And that's EXACTLY why I love them! (The Nice too for that matter.)

I haven't read this either.

 

By the way, Lemmy was also a roadie for Hendrix...